Primal Rights and TS Customs killing some dots

Travis @tscustoms stopped by tonight for some dot drills. We started off with 40 dots, and we were hopping back and forth between rifles during that. I already had 500+ rounds under my belt by the time Travis arrived, so I was a bit fatigued. First nice day we've had in a while... I have no regrets. :)

Then we set out a new dot drill and did 1 dot, one shot, stand up, face each other, then lay down and do it again for 20 dots. This is always an interesting drill and it always shows some interesting things. I was shooting a .223AI and so was Travis.

We're both pretty rusty from the long winter. ... and there's snow in the forecast for the weekend. bleh.

My target:

Travis's Target:

Good stuff. I still have to work out why this rifle will throw a shot 2 tenths high once in a while.

It was good to knock some rust off from the long winter.
Wonderful thing about these dot drills is you can't hide anything from them.

You might notice how my impacts in column 4 and 5 trend to the right side, definitely column 5 anyways. I was having a tendency to treat those as shots 4 and 5 instead of their own. My NPA was built pretty solid in line with dots 1,2,3 but I was pressing over to shots 4 and 5 instead of setting NPA specifically for those last two shots and treating them as their own.

I have also always struggled with relaxing my left shoulder down, relaxing my left side, and letting my chest settle more onto the ground. It causes me to fight a little left and right as I'm posted up on my elbow and weeble wobble side to side a bit. I worked on "kicking out" my left elbow and shaking loose my shoulder as I'd address the rifle before acquiring a sight picture to ensure my left side was relaxed and I had as much chest on the ground as possible. Doing that right, I could really bury some shots in the centers of the dots and recoil was straight back and forth with the reticle landing never more than a few tenths off the dot.

Things like this are just a couple of the reasons I train with Greg on my personal shooting. The method Greg teaches and follows gives you no room for excuses or unexplainable misses if you're being honest with yourself and your shots. There's a list a mile long of reasons that shots can land somewhere other than where you intended them to go, and what should be at the top of that list is YOU; but how do you know if you don't know?

One of the other targets I shot while Travis was here. Nine shots of the top two rows I shot with my 22BR. The rest of the dots I shot with .223AI pictured above. The first shot with that rifle was last dot on second row, so I came left a click and then went on for the rest.

You can see that .2 mil high shot that happens again there. At least 1 in 20 shots will do it. So weird.

I have no idea. I've exhausted my knowledge on this one. Chased down everything that I know to chase down. My gut tells me its an ignition problem. Next barrel on this will be something silly, like a MTU 26". I'll likely stick with .223AI. I'll know more after it gets re-barreled. Could just be the barrel. Sometimes this just happens.

Also, this surgeon action was not awesome from the factory. @tscustoms already fixed a fair number of issues with it when it was being built.

@orkan Shooting directly high would, at a rudimentary glance, indicate increased velocity. But that is so high it seems to me that it is unlikely to be the only reason. I haven't done any math to see, but I would think it would require a huge jump in speed to be just a change due to velocity. Is there even that much drop at 100yds?

BTW: My post above is in no sense of the word my trying to interject anything resembling knowledge on the subject. Rather it was just my stream-of-consciousness thinking about how I would go about seeking a solution to the problem.

@flyinphill Nope, not even close here. SD on this load is low single digits... and I've chrono'd strings of shots and velocity stays during fliers.

That kind of POI change at 100yds with a rifle that shoots this well can not be explained by a little burp of ES. During load dev I explored 200fps worth of velocity swing and you could have covered those groups with a nickel if overlapped.

I thought that was the draw of a custom action, the gunsmith doesn’t have to take the time to check it.

It helps if it's the RIGHT custom action. The proprietor of the Surgeon 591 is at the helm over at Impact actions. The only other action I'd consider if Lone Peak wasn't around. Once upon a time I thought Surgeon actions were quite good. I had good experiences with several. My last two required extensive work, and they were dismissive when I called about it... so they were and will be my LAST two surgeon actions I ever buy.

TS Customs was able to get them in workable condition, but they still suck compared to my lone peak build. Still nice rifles compared to what most people use... I'm just a picky bastard with very refined tastes. The best surgeon's I ever had, still sucked compared to the crappiest LPA I've ran.

I thought that was the draw of a custom action, the gunsmith doesn’t have to take the time to check it.

What's out there anymore that a guy doesn't have to give a once over before using? Very few items from even fewer companies. Human error, lack of care and quality control, among other things have me looking everything over nowadays.
Just the other day I picked something up at a store and it fell apart in my hands... guess I'll set that down and grab the one behind it. Doesn't matter if I'm shopping for a bag of fruit, a new hammer or a new gooseneck trailer, everything is getting my eye on it a couple of times.

I'm not even calling out a specific company or thing, it's just the way things seem to be now.

At least with my TS Customs rifles, I've just had to run a patch down that new bore and bang, bang, bang. Likewise with my Tangent Theta optics. Mount, zero, done.

Shameless plug for sure, but I know Orkan and Travis, and both are always making sure things are right.